itmightnotbeok

I made this blog for myself. My therapist helped to teach me that the best way I process painful events, is through talk therapy. When I experience a traumatic event, or high levels of negative emotions due to circumstance, I can’t just move on, no matter how much time goes by. I feel the emotions I felt, I see the images I saw, I hear the sounds or the words that were spoken, over and over and over again. Up until a few years ago, I labeled this experience “overthinking”. I have been told that’s what I was doing by a dozen or more people in my lifetime, and it honestly made sense. I was thinking, and it was definitely over the “acceptable” amount for most. It wasn’t until I finally sat down with a psychiatrist and described the things that were plaguing me daily that he explained I wasn’t “overthinking” these experiences. I was reliving them. I was having flashbacks. Hearing him say that was confusing to me at first. When I pictured someone having flashbacks, I pictured someone completely blacking out, or going. into a violent rage, or being so overcome with fear they started having a severe panic attack. My mind always jumped to veterans who had experienced the trauma of war, or people who had lived through a disaster or a horrific accident. The experiences I was reliving did not feel like they were “traumatic” or “valid” enough to be classified as that. But as he explained the way chronic post traumatic stress disorder effects the brain and it’s symptoms, it was just so fucking spot on. I had no say in what my brain decided to hold on to. When I would go through these events that caused me deep sorrow or fear, I would be unable to stop myself from dissociating and falling back into the feelings of that moment, and while I dont black out, I do zone out. I check out from the things around me and can see and feel everything, like it was for the first time.
I remember this starting to happen at a more severe and increased level when my 19 year old really started to suffer. Images of moments when we were screaming at each other at the bottom of those wooden stairs, or when they were laying on the hospital bed seizing as the doctors were rushing in, or the venom in their voice as the deepest fear and sadness and anger spilled from their lips, and the words that came with it would randomly flood into my head and my vision would recreate the memory. I recall a moment in group therapy when they shared how confused it would make them when we would be happy spending time together, and then my demeanor would suddenly change and I would make an excuse to get away and be alone. It took me a few seconds as I considered strongly whether to tell them the truth, but since we had been practicing honest communication when we were in a safe setting, I felt like they needed that more than a sugarcoated response.
I told them that they were right. That I was making excuses to get away. That my demeanor was changing, and usually without warning. For a few years, my time with them would often be interrupted with a sudden clip of something that had happened between us, or to them, and no matter how much healing had been done since, my mind would darken. My heart would quickly become surrounded by what felt like barbed wire, and I would close off towards them. I needed to get the images and feelings to stop, and I couldn’t do it when they were near me.

I know that it hurt them, it hurt me too. But they were gracious, and understanding, and after that, they gave me my space as I practiced trying to say I needed it.

I have flashbacks about very different things. Some of them have gotten better, some have gotten much worse.
So, back to the talk therapy. These memories that haunt and invade my thoughts without warning, against my efforts, can be really debilitating towards anything I am trying to accomplish. It’s hard for me to make any progress when my brain is literally keeping me in the past, and it feels impossible that the hurt will ever heal. But I love to write, so naturally I was told by multiple therapists that journaling was going to be my best course of action. It’s not an exaggeration that I have bought and tried to start writing in several dozen journals in the last ten years. But no matter how hard I have tried, it just doesn’t help. For some reason, to make those thoughts fill less of my head space, to feel the relief I seek, someone needs to hear what I have to say. I need to have it be able to be shared. Maybe it’s the fact that I have struggled in the past with knowing whats real, or maybe its that so many people have tried to tell me what I experienced wasn’t something valid enough to share. It honestly doesn’t matter. I know that this works for me, and so thats what I do.

That was more of an explanation to what I am going to try and say than I anticipated on giving, but I am (if you are new to this blog), someone who tends to have a lot to say. I wanted to explain, because I need to get some experiences out of my head and into the void. And when I say some, I mean potentially dozens. This blog is for me, but it’s also public. I have intentionally kept from sharing names, and try to keep this is un-personal towards other people as my own memories and experiences will allow. I’m not trying to destroy anything but my own pain. I am desperate for relief from the film reel that never stops rolling before my eyes. But the things I write about, often do involve other people. And the things I need relief from most, involve one person.
These are my memories. This is my point of view. This is what lives inside my head and my head only. There are always two sides. I promised to write as honestly as possible, and I have done that. There would be no point in trying to lie or fabricate because my only goal is to get rid of the things I write about’s occupancy inside my brain. But, even though it is my truth, and what feels honest to me, I am not claiming this is the correct perception.

I am just claiming that it is mine.

For the next while (I think honestly who knows how I’ll feel even an hour from now), I am going to just write these experiences out, as detailed as I can remember, or feel comfortable sharing. When I see those images in my head, when I hear the sounds and words that have blocked my ability to move forward so many times before, and if i feel like I am ready, I’m just going to write them down from beginning to end. This is my blog. This is what I need. My hope is that being as honest as I can will help me inch closer and closer to the freedom that I desperately am seeking, and possibly help someone else feel relief from the loneliness that darkness can bring.
I wanted to write about an experience that is one of the most realistic flashbacks I struggle with, but honestly I don’t feel like it anymore. I can only write when I need it, and after two cups of coffee and good food, I kind of just want to go home (I’ve been sitting at a cafe typing this out). I need to get it out though, so hopefully when the kids are sleeping tonight, I will feel more able.

For a long time, I’ve wished I could forget. Sometimes, I still do.
But now that I’m awake, I think the only way to stop the cycle, is to remember.

Sometimes, you spend a long time in darkness.

Sometimes, you never get out.

Sometimes, you just can’t hope anymore.

Sometimes, pain can feel so deep that it’s impossible to imagine any other feeling.

Sometimes, you find ourselves lost in a fire we never meant to start.

Sometimes, it feels like even if you get out, you will be left with scars that we will never fully heal.

And sometimes you worry that we will always want to go back to the flames, even if it was mottling our skin, eating away at our flesh and twisting our mind beyond total repair.

It’s been so hard to feel anything other than hopeless for so long. The feeling of exhaustion from fighting against it has left me feeling like a standing house that’s been hollowed out by termites, the entire thing about to collapse at any minute.

But sometimes,

sometimes, things can feel okay again.

Sometimes, you see someone that, several years before, you spent night after night wishing you would forget, and it doesn’t hurt at all.

Sometimes, time can evolve sadness without us even realizing.

Sometimes, you see an old friend, and realize that this time when you spoke about your life, you only had good things to say.

Sometimes, you find yourself smiling in the car when you’re alone, like all the people you usually mock.

Sometimes, you realize your criticism was from a place of envy and longing, not from a place of judgement.

Sometimes, your sitting around the table with your family for dinner, and you realize you are laughing again.

Sometimes, you realize when you’re in bed at 10 pm and falling asleep, that you’re actually okay with it.

Sometimes you stop being afraid of the night because you’ve stopped being afraid of waking up.

I know I will always have ups and downs. I know they will be higher and lower than some people experience.

I know it might not always be okay.

But it’s okay right now. And I really wasn’t sure it was going to be.

I just needed to write this down.

Because sometimes you really don’t get out, but sometimes you do.

And sometimes, most times, I forget that.

I’ve changed a lot recently.

Maybe that will change too.

I can’t remember the first time I said it, but I know it started when things were light, when love was still blossoming. Like a rose cut from the garden before it blooms, and the petals are just starting to fold out of their budding form, I would ask him to tell me. A childlike request that validated the want and desire I was already feeling for the first time when he spoke to me.

I’ve talked about the way my memory works before-how it tends to prioritize the bad over the good. I can’t remember the little things he would tell me in the beginning. All I can grasp is brief clips of my head pushing deeper into his arms when he would tell me or the flash of a grin across his face and feeling my lips turn that way in return. I can feel a sense of warmth but I can’t quite grab the actual words themselves.

The first response that became stained into my memory was September of 2023.

“I don’t think I’m in love with you anymore” was freshly floating in the air that I was struggling to breathe. I sat in the tiny bathroom near the front door after he left, knees to my chest as I tried to figure out what my life could possibly turn into without him in it. I held him so tightly before he walked out the door, told him all the things I saw in him. I told him he wasn’t a bad person, that it was my fault. I told him that he was going to be happy, that everything would be okay. I replayed it over and over in my head for what felt like hours before I picked up the phone and called him. I had told him I would delete his number, that I would leave him alone while he found himself, knowing what he said might happen. I agreed to wait as long as it took for him to come back to me, if he ever wanted to again.

But I hadn’t deleted it yet. I called him and through choked sobs, I told him I would leave him alone, if he could just tell me one thing. “Can you tell me something sweet?” were the words that tumbled from my lips, as my entire body shook with sorrow and desperation.

He told me that I had shown him the rawest form of love he had ever known. That I was a fighter, that the world had been shitting on me since the moment I opened my eyes and yet I still chose to live. That I still chose to trust. He told me that my strength to keep going was pure, and that because I had such a big heart, that he knew it would be a lifetime of heartbreak ahead of me if I continued to wear it as openly as I did. He told me I was precious.

I spent a month after that trying to get my shit together. I wrote my first blog post. I got sober. I cooked, I cleaned, I tried to live in the waiting I had created for myself. I tried to be someone he would want to come back to. I held onto his response and used it as fuel to be that person he saw in me, and to choose to live when I felt so dead inside.

That is the only time I can remember that question being something that actually gave me hope.

From that moment on, I used that question from a different place, for a very different reason.

I started asking it when my life became a roller coaster. Small glimmers of light were constantly extinguished as I plummeted into darkness that hours, days, or weeks of disregard and criticism left me in, reeling for some sort of hope to hold on to. I asked, curled up on that hotel bed when I didn’t think I could hear one more word about everything that was wrong with me because I needed an escape from the chaos and torment.

The request turned into a desperate cry for relief. I was begging for anything I could replay in my head that wasn’t about what a failure I was, no matter how hard I tried. Something to stand as a shield between the words spat at me in disgust and resentment that were coming from the person I wanted to be good enough for most. Something to keep me standing when I was being pushed deeper and deeper into the ground.

It evolved further into an unspoken sign of defeat between us. My defeat. I could never stop pushing back against the things that seemed so opposite of love inside me. I would fight back against signs of deception, disrespect or disregard even though I knew the pain that would follow, no matter how badly I tried to stay silent.

But every time, I would end up broken, the strength that the anger against those things had given me, replaced with confusion on if I was even well enough to judge someone’s actions. The doubt that would be created in my head against my own character would rise up stronger than the self protection I was trying to enforce, and I would be left once again, knees to my chest, unable to breathe, longing for the pain to be over.

I remember sitting in the car, after a night of complete and total collapse, after screaming into the floor and fighting back the demons that were created by his words, after being unable to calm down and begging him to come at 4 am and just hold me. I begged him to just tell me everything was okay, that it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t deserve the way he had treated me, even if he didn’t mean it. The next morning I woke up next to him and I was so happy. The relief that followed the destruction was like pure dopamine for my brain and I struggled deeply being able to function without it. I got dressed up. I found someone to watch the kids. We were going to get Wawa breakfast, listen to Vultures 2, and just drive around and enjoy the time we had together. But by the time we had gotten our food, it had already been ripped away. The blame had begun, and I was left confused and heartbroken that I had once again lost that moment of calm I needed so badly. We rode around after he pulled back into the driveway and I begged him to back up because I was afraid for anyone to see the state of hysteria I had fallen into. I can remember pieces of the landscape that he drove past as he told me all the ways my grief was “bad behavior”. That I was the cause of every problem, that if I could just learn to act right, this wouldn’t be happening to me.

And so was born the unspoken agreement. I was curled as far into the passenger door as I could get. The rim of my shirt and my face were soaked with tears as I finally stopped fighting. I spoke the words into the silence that had begun to creep over us as I asked, “tell me something sweet”.

That became my white flag. When I said that, he knew I was done. He knew I had stopped caring about whatever had originally hurt me because the pain of speaking it out loud to him and the punishment I received had become even greater. He knew I was ready to be quiet. He knew I was ready to do whatever it took to make it stop, and to feel like I was safe again.

There were so many times where I begged just for a word of kindness. I would sob and shake and beg him to just say one thing about me that was good.

But even in my defeat, even in my acceptance and letting go of whatever it was that I wasn’t valid in feeling in his eyes, the responses became colder and colder.

He didn’t have anything left to say. His words became shallow and redundant. I would ask again, and again and again sometimes just to try and feel something real. But it stopped coming.

There was nothing left to say.

I would be lying if I told you that if I saw his face those words would not immediately come to my head to speak to him. Even now, the depth of desire I have to hear something he loved about me, or saw in me that was good, is unchanged.

Tell me something sweet. Tell me I wasn’t just sick. Tell me I had a right to feel the way I did. Tell me you know I loved you with everything I had.

Tell me I didn’t deserve what I went through.

Tell me part of you actually loved me at the end.

Those words are like bitter chocolate in my mouth now. The desire for something satisfying, only to be left with wiping my tongue off with a rag.

But to hear it one more time…

would be pretending.

I lost my imagination a long time ago.

After you left my room tonight, I sat there on my bed for like 30 minutes and just thought about how captivating you are. I thought about how  hard it is for me to even associate the memories I have of myself as real before you were in them. How I forget all the time that I wasn’t the one to hold you when you were first born, or tuck you in when you were little, or see your first steps. 

I think it’s because to me, it does feel like I’ve watched you from the beginning. When you first entered my life you were just like a newborn. You just showed up with a big smile on your face and looked at everything around you like it was the first time. You were clumsy and unfamiliar with the world as it really was. You had these tiny pieces of a real personality but you had learned to mimic those around you in order to feel safe and accepted. You made alot of noise, but you didn’t really know how to communicate. You were VERY loud to compensate for not yet having the words to describe the thoughts that lived inside you as they to get out. You were clingy, terrified of being left alone for even a few minutes. I remember having to find excuses to lock myself in the bathroom sometimes because I had never been around something that needed me so much. I genuinely thought you might collapse if I even hinted that I needed space and I was terrified to let you down. You were always with me, always touching me or sitting on me, or asking questions nonstop.  I used to drive in complete silence everywhere I went, just because everything had become so loud all of the time. 

To watch you feel safe enough to start to develop your own ideas, your own feelings and opinions on the way you thought the world should be, was genuinely one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

But like any child growing up, that growth also came with the pain required for change. You became confused as the settings and truths in the memories you held turned from fun and innocent to sinister and traumatic. The brightly colored backdrop your mind had created to hide the world behind it, fell, and it was more frightening than you could have ever been prepared for. 

You never deserved to live through the depth of heartbreak and suffering that you  were now facing, and you were defenseless.

You became reckless, and your actions became that of someone who had found themselves in a nightmare that they had never been taught how to wake up from. The pain that I watched you fight to understand, was like watching someone slowly suffocate, and it left us both with memories and scars that will never fade 

I have shed more tears, experienced more fear, and held more anger in the years I’ve had with you than if I had raised you from birth. And for a long time, everytime I was away from you, the only thought my brain could hold was “will they be alive when I get back”.

I was terrified you wouldn’t make it.

But as the leaves fell, and the winter chilled us to our bones, slowly, all that had died down to almost the roots, started to grow again. Tiny petals were visible underneath the melting snow, trees that had looked dried out, began to form small leaves all over their branches. Places in you that had frozen, started to thaw. 

You have blossomed into the most beautiful, selfless, confident and empathetic human I have ever seen. Somehow, in the darkness that you had been trying so hard to hide, that you were forced to face, unprepared and as tiny as you were, you found a spot of light and were brave enough to follow it out. You got out on your own. You found your strength in that truth you were so terrified to see, and you came out scared, and strong, and absolutely radiant. 

You are my role model. You are the definition of unconditional love. You see people as good even when you have every right not to. You fight so hard for what matters to you, and you fight so fucking hard for yourself. You went from a clumsy, loud, afraid child, to a (let’s be so fr) clumsy, loud, brave adult who genuinely leaves everyone better just for having met you. You still experience fear all of the time, but you stay.

You could have left. You could have made all the pain and all the heartbreak stop, but you chose to stay and hope for something more. There is no bravery, without being afraid first.

I may not have held you when you were born, but I’ve held you when you were dying. I may not have tucked you in when you were little but I’ve tucked you in when you were big. I didn’t see your first steps, but I am so thankful I got to watch you as you chose not to take your last. 

You are the light of my life. My platonic soulmate. My heart outside of my body. You have been so strong, and you are going to do so much good that you will create a life for so many people that they will never have to even paint that brightly backdrop in the first place. 

I’m so proud of you. I love you with every breath I have in me. You will never be alone again. You will always be enough. You came in trying to show only light. Then, you were only able to hold onto darkness. 

Now you are both. Day and night. Sun and moon. And what is day anyway, without the night? 

Growing Giving up

I don’t think my anger has ever been so unjustified as it has been this season.
Mere mention of the current holiday has made me visibly agitated, and the bitterness I feel inside my chest when I’m reminded of it, I have never experienced until this year. I found myself right up until the kids woke up this morning, wishing I could somehow just sleep through it. That I could bypass the songs, the commercials, the conversations, the lights, the excitement so many people shared, until the bleakness of winter was all that anyone had left.

I don’t know what or where the root of the anger I feel towards it is. It’s not a time of year that I have a strong emotional connection to or deep rooted pain in. So why have I been nauseous for two months?

Either way, it’s over. And the promise of the remaining months of darkness, death and lonelines, for some reason, this year, feels like relief.

Losing the person who is in every memory I have that feels real has left me feeling stranded. Like I’m in some sort of alternate reality, where things look almost exactly the same but are slightly off, and I’m the only one who notices. Like I’ve left for the airport and have that gut feeling I’m forgetting something, but can’t turn back or I will miss my flight. He was my home. The place I turned to for safety and comfort when the outside world was too much for me to take anymore. 

But even our homes can become someplace that is unfamiliar to us. Over the years, the home that I came to for peace from my own mind, took damage from the  environment around it, and the carelessness inside it. A place that felt so secure had become a place of instability and caution. There were cracks running through its foundation that no matter how many times I tried to repair them, would reopen with the slightest movement. Mold grew between the walls and although someone walking through couldn’t see it, the effects had me unable to breathe as I once did. An invisible toxin that was poisoning me slowly. Places that were once kept beautiful, were ripped out and replaced with a cheap imitation of what once was. Spots that the sun would shine and wrap me in warmth became cold and chilled me to the bone. 

I stayed because I could see the sanctuary it had been for me, and to start over, would be the ultimate loss. To lose something I had been waiting for my entire life, would be a heartbreak I’m still not sure if I’m strong enough to live through. 

But sometimes our homes become somewhere that can’t revert back to what they used to be. 

Sometimes we have to leave. 

Sometimes there isn’t time to gather all we would need to rebuild, to make it feel as close as it could to the original. 

Sometimes all you have time for is to get out. 

Sometimes we lose everything we ever wanted, and are left to wander, wondering if we will ever feel safe again. 

I have so many things I want to write about right now.

I want to write about the desire I’ve always had to be (it’s ok to judge me) supported by a man. And I do not mean financially like a trophy wife because I already lived that this summer and it fucking sucked. I mean why I continuously seek a man to come and rescue me from the loneliness I have felt my entire life. A man that I know is safe, reliable, deeply committed to doing what it would take to make sure I’m ok and is there to catch me every single time I fall. I want to talk about where I think that need comes from, and why I believe it leads me to choose the same, and I mean cookie cutter same, kind of partner every single time. I want to talk about why I don’t agree that someone has to be okay with being alone, why I don’t know if I will ever really be satisfied if I don’t find that person and how (as of right now) I’m not ashamed to say that.

I want to write about the things I can recognize that I have been doing/thinking the last two years. How talking to my best friend that’s known me for over 15 years the other night made me realize something that was both eye opening and devastating and terrifying all at once but could potentially put an end to patterns of heartbreak and ruin.

I want to write a letter to the people who love me. Not like my casual friends or distant family, but the people who are and have been active in my life for a long time. The people that have genuinely experienced true pain watching me continuously hurt and betray myself. I want to tell them that I think I finally grasp how out of control my mind is. That how I thought because my thoughts didn’t look the same or as bad as they have in the past that my thinking wasn’t still distorted. I want to write them an apology because I have now read my own words from the beginning and I am hurt and angry at myself. I want to talk about how none of this has been done intentionally or out of blatant disregard, but that I can’t imagine how it has felt for them. That I do trust them but it’s impossible for me not to listen to my own voice. That I really want to fix this cycle of destruction.

I want to talk about the loneliness of bipolar. How painful it has been to have the person I love most use my disorder as a reason to justify why my needs are unreasonable, or my feelings are too sensitive, or my memory is distorted but would dismiss when I actually have effects from it. That he would tell me after I have expressed my hurt from his behavior that I needed to remember that I was “sick” but would tell me that it didn’t make sense that I could have episode that lasted months. That I must have been semi aware of my decisions and question the validity of the diagnosis I received while he was in the room next to me. That he would shape my symptoms into reasons why I wasn’t loyal, didn’t love him like I said I did, or was a harmful person. I want to write about the loneliness I feel when I try and reach out for help and the guilt that follows. That I cannot put into words that just because I’m not going to kill my self doesn’t mean that I don’t seriously need support and that I am suffering. I want to talk about how hard it is to have any kind of hope when statistically I have a significantly lower life span, a higher chance of suicide, no hope of a cure, can only be controlled with meds and life changes, and the older I get the worse it will get. I want to talk about how it felt watching my father transform into a monster and then die and how it feels knowing that could be my future.

I want to write about the confusion of what a mixed episode feels like, and my experiences as I am currently in one as I write this.

I want to write about how exhausting and frustrating it is to have taken on so many responsibilities and dug myself so deep into things when I was manic and able it, that now that I have severely lost some of my executive functioning skills, it feels impossible to survive sometimes.

I have alot I want to write about. I started this post last night and didn’t have the energy to finish.

I’m making this list to hold myself accountable.

I have really big changes coming this week. I’m moving in with my mom so that I can rely on my family for support instead of being bound to a someone financially, unable to escape. So that I can turn to my family in my weakness instead of turning to the people who are contributing to it. I have an appointment with my psych today who hopefully will help me to have more stability because after realizing how I’ve been thinking and how I am still switching between two worlds, completely losing my ability to merge both pieces, I need more help.

I have to start accepting that my life, the people in it, my activities, even my future, is going to look a lot different than I had once imagined.

I’m never going to “get over being bipolar”. If I am going to do more then just survive, I need to create a plan to protect myself, from myself. I need to adapt. I need to change.

I’m tired of just existing. I need to learn how to support myself. I need to learn how to advocate for myself. I need to learn how to become the person I could actually be without being so debilitated by my own mind.

Kanye said that being bipolar makes him a superhero. As much as I try not to assume about people’s motives or mental states, I think its safe to assume he had those thoughts during a manic episode. I used to feel like I was a superhero, until the lows started to become my everyday life. Now I feel like more times than not, I’m actually the villain, or maybe just cursed. But if I could keep a part of each side when I switch over, if I could have access to both worlds, I won’t have superpowers, but maybe a life with more stability than suffering is possible.

That’s all I have ever wanted anyway.

I have only ever given my heart to men who slept peacefully while I broke into pieces beside them. Connected only by the skin on my back touching their chest as they lay unphased, indifferent.

I don’t think I know what love is.

“Can I hold you”?

It felt like every part of my mind and body screamed, “YES”.

His arms have been my home for so long. All I ever want to do is disappear into that familiar place, to smell that familiar smell and let go of my worries and fears as he sheltered me from life itself. As he calmed the chaos inside of me that never rests. My body has been screaming for safety not just for weeks, but for as long as I can really remember.

But,

Something different happened this time. I’m going to try and describe this the best that I possibly can. I want to write this down while it’s fresh. I want to remember this exactly as it happened, and then maybe, it will happen again.

It felt like time stopped for a moment. I’m sure in reality it was only a few seconds before my response, but I remember feeling this longing in my physical body, this sheer desperation for a moment that I knew would bring me peace right then and there.

I have never been good at saying no to something that I know will feel good, even if I know full well it will hurt me later. I think that’s probably a defining characteristic of an addict. I don’t think about the future. I have never even been able to really picture the future let alone in a moments notice analyze the effects of my current decisions on it. This inability to stop and think about what I am doing and if the temporary high is worth the pain later is a skill I have never been able to learn.

It’s why I agreed to ten days with him, knowing full well how he felt and what would happen at the end.

It’s why I let him into my bed so many times without knowing if he would leave again.

It’s why I convinced myself that he loved me, when he was actively harming me.

The list could go on and on and on.

It’s not as if I don’t know, somewhere inside me, that the temporary comfort I will feel is going to cause even more damage later. It’s that in the moment, the desire for that relief is too overpowering. I know it might hurt later, but I just don’t care. I’m not blind, I choose not to see.

I’ll admit when I am manic it usually isn’t a choice anymore. I really can’t see what the outcomes of my behavior will be. My daughter told me something recently that her therapist said. She said that being in an episode is like seeing the world through warped lenses. I still see and experience everything around me, but it doesn’t look the same to me as it would have when I was stable. My vision is distorted. The problem is that in true mania, I have no idea that I’ve got these glasses on. Like someone has put them on me while I was asleep and I woke up without checking the mirror. So I don’t realize that things are different than before, and therefore I don’t reach up and take them off until it’s too late.

But, when it’s my stable self in control, it is a choice. A choice between a moment of peace and the pain that comes later, or saying no to relief, continuing to feel suffocated by the pain, but keep my dignity and avoid hopefully adding more. But the thing is, I already feel pain. Every single day it sits in my chest, reminding me of the memories I wish I could forget. Consciously choosing to deny myself any relief, no matter how temporary, in exchange for one less memory added to the dark, disgusting collection that is rotting inside of me, would take an enormous amount of self control and rational thinking, two of the things I lack most. I am usually going to hurt either way, so at least I can have a moment of peace in between.

But this time, there was a separation from that disparity, and the rest of myself.

It was like a slideshow started playing. Memories of moments that I had said yes scrolled past in my mind, and each one reminded me of how weak I have felt. How powerless I have felt over my own body and my own mind.

I have said yes out of fear. I have said yes out of desperation. I have said yes out of insecurity, out of laziness, out of selfishness. I literally saw inside my head my younger self over and over choose something that was beneath her, just to feel okay. It was a really fucking surreal experience. As I watched myself choose these temporary highs again and again, I remembered the feelings that came with each one. Feelings of shame, worthlessness, embarrassment, betrayal, heartbreak. An overwhelming sense sadness and sympathy started rising inside me.

I don’t ever want to be pitied. I’ve made my choices and no matter what the circumstance was, I am responsible and accountable for the outcome. But as I saw each moment that took a piece of me with it, I felt pity watching myself. Watching myself, hurt MYself.

I understand it probably doesn’t make sense as I’m writing this because in real time this had to have taken place in like under 30 seconds. But this really is what I experienced.

I looked at this person that I had loved for such a long time, that I had in that time been willing to do anything just to feel his love for me, and as I did one last memory scrolled in front of me.

We were sitting in my closet. He had shown up late after one of our many break ups. I asked him to come talk to me. I always did. It did not matter how hurt I had been, or how angry I had felt. It always ended with me asking, begging, waiting, for him to come back. I was angry this time. He had said words to me that broke me to my core hours before. I listened on the floor as he questioned my character, minimized my struggles and the ways I had overcome them and made excuses for why I was to blame.

But then he said the words “Can I please just hold you”?

For the first time in my life, my anger was stronger than my desire to feel loved. I didn’t think about anything inside, I still wasn’t considering the weight of my decision. Instead of being overpowered by desire and saying yes, I was overpowered by my anger, and I said no.

He looked at me, after just asking to hold me, after telling me how he just wanted to feel my skin, after telling me that he loved me, and walked out.

This memory played out in front of me as I looked at his face and I remembered the devastation that came after realizing that if I didn’t give him my physical body, I was worthless to him. He didn’t want my heart, he wanted my form. And when he couldn’t have it, he left.

The memory ended and I remember asking him “If I say no, will you leave?” I didn’t want him to leave, and I was seriously considering saying yes to keep him from going. I was still fighting against myself.

He said he wouldn’t leave. But after so many lies, after so much betrayal and broken promises, I didn’t believe him.

I had to make a choice between feeling that safety I had always chosen, over my dignity, or saying no and never feeling it again.

I looked at his face, I felt my physical body screaming at me to just get out of the car and let him hold me one last time. But I also felt the pity for myself for all the times I believed him. I did not feel ashamed for the moments I had chosen temporary satisfaction, I felt sorrow that for so long I have been so desperate to just be okay.

I knew I would feel better if I said yes, but I knew how I would feel in the future too. I became overwhelmed with this protective feeling for my younger self. It suddenly became clear that the feeling of safety I craved was not going to come from someone’s embrace that had abandoned me and failed to keep me from harm.

I realized the safety I craved has never come from anyone else in the long run.

I realized that the desperate desire to be protected that I’ve had as long as I could remember, would never come if I didn’t break the cycle. That by allowing myself to ignore the reality around me, I was actually abandoning myself.

The safety I have searched for, and bent for all of my life, was inside me. I didn’t have to look for someone to protect me anymore.

I could protect myself.

I said no. A tiny part of me was still fighting against that word, but it was so small, it was easily overpowered.

I hope I remember this. I have always said that I have been waiting my whole life for someone to protect me.

How strange, at 31, to realize that maybe that someone,

has been me all along.

Maybe the way I break this cycle of ending up with people who aren’t meant for me, who are unsafe for me, is that I stop looking for safety in them.

If I can learn to keep myself safe, then maybe I will learn to see things as they are, not what I want them to be. If I can learn what makes me feel unsafe early enough, anyone who threatens that, will not have access to me.

Maybe if I find safety and comfort within myself, I will finally be free.

Why is it that,

no matter how much I beg for my anger to stay,

it never does?

That no matter how much I try and put all of my energy into reliving every degrading moment, cycling every situation that made me feel worthless, over and over and over again,

the fury always runs out and I’m just left with sorrow.

Why does the hate always wash away? Why does the love stay embedded into me, like the shells buried in the sand from the wake?

Why do you break just enough bones to cripple me,

but always refuse to finish the job?

Why isn’t my heart so worn down by every single time you turned away from me, as I pleaded for the love you promised, that the thought of you sickens me?

Why does my brain try and protect me from everything that’s painful, except for you, who has hurt me the worst?

I want to burn every trace of you in me until the only thing I have left to remind me of us is the taste of ashes in my throat.

I want to hate you.

I hate that I can’t hate you.

You don’t deserve the love I still hold.

Why can’t I see you for who you are, not who I wanted you to be?

I am the last person you would call gullible,

so why can’t I let go of the people that I know, never ever really wanted to be held?

Why can’t I accept that no matter how badly I thought it was my turn,

it just wasn’t?

It just wasn’t love.

I just wasn’t loved.

I guess that’s probably why I can’t let it go.

Because then,

all over again,

like a record that’s stuck in a loop,

I’m 31, hearing the same advice I heard when I was 15,

my reality still unchanged,

I just wasn’t loved.

Why is it that,

no matter how much I beg for people to stay,

they never do?